


Falling For The Sky

by Quarra, sparkly_butthole



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fairy Tale Elements, First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Magical Realism, Reunions, Sharing Body Heat, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:29:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quarra/pseuds/Quarra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkly_butthole/pseuds/sparkly_butthole
Summary: Captain America’s out there saving the world one catastrophe at a time, but Steve Rogers is tired. He’s never gotten the chance to truly grieve for what he’d lost during the war and going into the ice, and it’s killing him inside.Then lightning strikes and a face appears in the sky, and Steve finally gets his chance to say goodbye. The only problem is that he’s fairly sure none of this is a hallucination, and that Bucky Barnes is out there in the universe, needing his help. Will he be able to make it in time to save him, if he’s even real? Or will he lose the person he’d loved most in the world for the second time?A story in which the impossible happens, fairy tales come true, and Steve Rogers gets everything he’s ever needed.Written for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author: [sparkly_butthole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkly_butthole/pseuds/sparkly_butthole/works?fandom_id=586439)  
> Artist: [quarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quarra/works)
> 
> From the Author: I've never participated in a reverse big bang before, but it has been such a wonderful experience. I owe that to the organizers and my artist, whose art I fell in love with the moment I saw it. I'm so lucky to have gotten to write for it and to consider her my friend. 
> 
> I want to say thank you to my alpha and beta readers, [Arke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arke/pseuds/Arke) and [NurseDarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NurseDarry/pseuds/NurseDarry), without whom none of my work would be half as good as it is.
> 
> From the Artist: A huge thanks to Sparkly for doing such a wonderful job on the story for this! I was so excited to see what they came up with, and I hope you all like it as much as I do :)

The last place Steve Rogers wants to be fighting the next world-ending wave of aliens is in the middle of some forest in the dead of night, and that’s for damn sure. Not that there’s an ideal place for this type of thing. At least it’s beautiful out here, and there are no camera crews to catch every last mistake he makes.

All in all, it could be worse.

His grunt spills over the comm link as a giant bug slashes at him with its talons. The cut rips through his stealth suit and immediately begins to sting.

“Everything alright?” Natasha asks him, and of course everything is _not_ all right. He’s fighting giant bugs, for heaven’s sake. Nightmare fuel.

“Their talons are coated with poison, I think.”

“Yep,” Clint confirms, breathing heavily. “Sounds about right.”

“How did a bug get you if they’re on the ground and you’re in a - you know, never mind,” Nat says. She mutters under her breath, and Steve can’t help but smile a little.

The stupid bug-things sweep along the forest floor as quickly as the Avengers can take them out, at least until they stumble upon the interdimensional gateway vomiting them onto the Earth. After that, it’s a quick takedown; they’ve seen this kind of thing before, and they know exactly how to handle it.

So it seems like a relatively routine, if nightmare-inducing, kind of evening, at least until they make it to the town three miles down the road. The town where the distress call originated.

The town that is silent and still with thousands of dead bodies.

Steve knows it well before the others do. The smell hits him, the unmistakable scent of decay, and he makes them pull over so he can throw up. It’s just as bad as the battlefields back in WWII - worse, even, because this is more like gangrene; like putrescence, infection; like rotting, black flesh.

The thing is, Steve Rogers is capable of handling these situations. On occasion, though, they hit him hard, harder than he thinks they should, anyway, and today is one of those days. There was nothing he could’ve done - he knows that, thank you very much - but he can’t seem to avoid blaming himself.

Tony makes jokes about it, Clint pats him on the back in sympathy, and Nat’s a silent but steady presence. None of it brings him any peace tonight. An entire town, gone in the blink of an eye, and he couldn’t save them. He didn’t have a chance. It’s senseless destruction and pain so deep it burrows under his skin like a disease.

He wraps up his leg and cleans it, though he doesn’t really need to, just as an excuse to do _something_ , to occupy his hands somehow. It doesn’t help, either. The crew aids the local police and forensics department in cleaning up the eviscerated, poisoned bodies, and disposes of the dead bugs, but he just can’t do it tonight. He glances at Nat and she mouths to him _go, get out of here_.

So he goes.

***

Steve makes his way between the evergreens, taking in the scent of pine and feeling his heart throb dully in his chest. He’s dutiful to a fault, and he did sign up for this all those years ago when he first became Captain America, but sometimes he thinks a nice, quiet life in a place like this might be just the thing.

And he’s _tired_.

It’s not the kind of tired that comes with a lack of sleep, or physical exertion. Not even emotional exertion can explain this. It’s not PTSD, or depression, or any of the other fancy-schmancy things SHIELD psychologists like to call it. It’s the exhaustion of having lived too long without peace. It’s losing those he loved - Bucky, Peggy, the Howlies - and coming into this century a stranger. No human should ever have to live through something like that, but he has. And sometimes - though only sometimes, thank heavens - Steve feels like it’s broken him.

He breathes deep, holds it for a count of ten, and lets out a sigh from deep in his chest. Then he passes through the last line of trees and settles on a hill overlooking a lake that sparkles with every wink of the stars. This place is untouched by city lights, and he can see the stars the way man was meant to see them - high and bright and sharper than diamonds. It reminds him of how Bucky used to love going to the observatory, bugging Steve until he agreed to look through the scope, and then telling him about the constellations and everything they knew about space. Or at least everything they thought they knew, which wasn’t all that much at the time. Bucky was like a walking encyclopedia of astronomy.

Steve raises his head to the sky and smiles sadly into the warm, peaceful night air, remembering how excited Bucky’d always been whenever they’d gotten a chance to go. But Steve doesn’t want to think about Bucky right now. He just wants to exist, out of thought and out of mind.

There’s a spot in the distance that looks like a face made of stars and streaks of sky. He squints at it and it draws him in until the world starts to fade around him, a focal point in the sky while all his errant thoughts and fears blur around the edges. It’s there that Steve finds a sliver of peace for the first time in what feels like ages. And he doesn’t have to process anything outside of that thing that is both a face and not, soothing his soul.

Then the sky erupts.

There’s no other word for it. The sky blazes, white lightning wrapped in a dusky purple shade that turns the sky from black to midnight blue and sears his eyes, burns the image into his mind forever. But it’s not just an image - it’s real, it’s here, on him and _inside_ him, lighting him up, not with pain but with fascination and _yearning_.

The lightning seems to crackle along his skin. Time slows, spins, catching him in an inexorable wave. It flows over him, through him, overwhelming all his senses and then he's _drowning_ in it. It crawls across the sky like molasses, an inexplicable, impossible metaphor. Everything, all his senses run together into a mass of pure _being_ , and Steve’s never seen-heard-felt anything so incredible in his entire life.

And there’s even more to it than that. Something’s out there, some entity; he can feel it flowing through his veins - a pounding, a warning, a presence. No, a _Presence_. It feels… familiar, somehow. Comforting, even if overwhelmingly powerful and able to crush him in an instant, just like one of those bugs he’d spent all evening fighting. Hell, he himself would crush a million of them for one more second of this feeling.

And the face-that-is-not-a-face opens its eyes and _sees him,_ and here’s the thing: even Steve is only human. He loses consciousness in the face of that power, and as he falls under, he feels nothing but a profound sense of loss and regret _._

The next thing Steve Rogers knows is that he’s back on the quinjet, sitting quietly in his seat, while the others chatter and laugh around him. It was a long day, and a sad day in many ways, but a job well done nevertheless. They saved the world from aliens yet again, quietly and without cameras this time. He smiles shyly, somewhat confusedly, at them when they turn his way, because he honestly has no idea how he got here. Steve tries to listen to the conversation, too, but can’t pay attention. There’s only one thing on his mind.

A lightning rod borne of despair, and a pair of sorrowful gray-blue eyes.

 

 

***

For three years, two in this century and one in the previous, Steve has dreamt nearly every night of a freight car rolling along a track in the howling winds of the Alps. Too high up to be safe, yet they did it anyway, thinking they were invincible, impervious to death.

What hubris that had been.

Steve normally awakens bathed in sweat sometime around one o’clock, give or take an hour - and the dream repeats itself every night like clockwork, like his brain is committed to forcing him to relive this memory over and over again.

But tonight is different. Tonight, his head is full of brilliant blues and bright purples, of a light stretch of red surrounding white lightning, surrounding _him_ , of a face in the sky with eyes that seemed so familiar and so pained.

It’s the first time he hasn’t dreamt of Bucky since the very night he fell. And his relief is palpable, though he feels ashamed of it.

This, though, this thing, this spirit in the sky, it has a darkness to it, too, of a different kind.

And Steve would give anything to understand just what that darkness is…

***

“You seem distracted today, chief.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Chief?”

“Captain, eh, whatever,” Clint says as he chews on a piece of beef jerky. “Same difference, right?” he asks with his mouth full.

Steve scrunches his nose in disgust. “Natasha was right when she said you were a - and I quote - ‘hot mess.’”

Clint doesn’t take offense to that, just nods in acknowledgement. “Takes one to know one, though,” he says, thankfully after he swallows.

“Then I guess the whole team falls under that category.”

“Now you’re gettin’ it.” Clint pats him on the back and walks away.

***

Steve dreams of it again the next night - the hillside, the lightning, the face. The pain in those beautiful grey-blue eyes. He’s fairly certain at this point that it was all a hallucination, brought on by stress or - and he hates to admit this - PTSD. But it had felt so real.

Could it have been real? He’s overheard Bruce and Tony talk about circumstances that seemed outrageous, though he doesn’t tend to understand many of their discussions to begin with, and aliens have attacked Earth several times now. So who knows what’s real and what’s not?

But the incoming existential crisis fades under the lights from the sky. The face pulses in and out in his dream, almost like it’s fighting something just for the right to stay in this world, or at least that’s the impression Steve gets. It’s in his head again, the slowness, the stretching of time; even in his dream, it feels real.

And then a voice comes out of the lightning, into the lightning, through it and into _him_ , echoing in his mind:

_Steve._

And time

      s

             l

                     i

 

                            p

 

                                 s

  


His first thought is: _this is a dream._ Then: _I’m a ghost._ But no, that’s not true, is it? It’s not a dream, and he isn’t a ghost. This is as real as the wind at his back, the cool grass under him, and the soft, blond hair on his head. He pulls it just to be sure, then runs his hands along the fabric of the track pants he’d worn to bed. A confirmation. This is as real as anything can possibly be.

So is the slowing of nighttime, the crawling of lights across the sky. He lights up from the inside out, feeling larger than life, lighter than air, and then he sees the face again. The eyes that seem so familiar. Like slate, or like the ocean itself, moving and immoveable.

And the voice. It seems familiar, too.

_Steve._

It echoes within his mind the way it would inside a cavern, filling every nook and cranny and making Steve’s head spin. Overwhelmed, he closes his eyes, even though he desperately wants to see this awesome display. How will he know it’s really him?

This cannot be. It cannot.

“Bucky?” he asks aloud, then curses. “Am I actually sitting here on a hill talking to myself?”

_Not yourself, no._

“What are you then? Who are you?”

_I don’t know._

“How do you mean, you don’t know?”

_I’m here. But I’m not here._

“Well how did you know my name?”

…

“Bucky?”

_Who is Bucky? Am I a Bucky?_

Steve shakes his head and looks at the grass, feeling like he’s well and truly gone mad now. This can’t be Bucky… but the eyes and the voice say otherwise. His heart, pounding in his chest like he’s this side of a heart attack, says otherwise.

He tries again. “How did you know my name?”

_I don’t know._

Steve wants to rip up the grass in frustration. How can he - it - the Presence, whatever or whoever it is - how can it not know?

“Are you alive? Am I dead?”

_Neither of those are true._

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

_They mean you are a fool._

Then the voice lets out a sob, minute but still there, still as real as any of this. It hurts Steve, hurts him just the way it hurts whoever uttered it.

_I don’t know where I am, or who I am. All I know is pain._

Steve’s heart drops through his stomach and into the grass underneath him. It’s Bucky - it’s got to be Bucky - and he’s in pain. He’s real, he’s out there somehow, and he needs help.

Suddenly determined, he opens his eyes and turns them toward the face in the sky. The face, he now realizes, is wearing a mask, a thin, black muzzle that covers the lower half of it. And the inky blackness around his eyes - that’s his hair, long and matted and dirty.

And it’s Bucky’s face. He’s certain of it now.

“I will find you. I will find wherever you are, and I will get you out, and you’ll come home.”

_You cannot. I am nowhere._

“That’s not true.”

_Go home, Steve._

Time slips again. He wakes in his bed with fresh tear tracks down his face.

***

Life feels like a dream after that - or maybe a nightmare, he’s not sure which. Bucky may be alive, and that alone is enough to make Steve’s heart soar with joy. Not only that, but Bucky can pluck him from sleep and place him right onto that hill, drop him right into the lightning itself, and communicate with him. Steve’s positive that he’d really been out there, considering he’d awakened in track pants still wet with dew. (Not piss - he’d checked.)

On the other hand, if Bucky is truly alive, and not a figment of Steve’s admittedly overactive imagination, he’s in trouble. In trouble and in pain, unaware of where or even who he is, and that’s enough to give Steve a goddamn ulcer.

He’s tempted to go to his friends - for advice, for an explanation, for something to sort out his mixed-up head, but he’s afraid that that _something_ is going to end up being super soldier-strength Prozac (or Valium… more likely Valium). The situation sounds insane, even to Steve himself, who is living the thing. He’d be more likely to commit himself to a mental institution.

So he keeps his mouth shut and suffers for it.

The team notices. Of course they do. Natasha first, since she notices everything, followed by the others one at a time. Even Thor, who’s not on Earth very often and who walks around with his head in a very literal thundercloud, can tell something’s off with Steve.

It’s movie night at the Tower - a rare gift, and one that he treasures - when Thor sits next to him on the couch, crowding his space.

“Captain Rogers!” Thor’s genial pat on the back nearly sends him flying. “You seem unwell! I thought that was not possible for a man such as yourself.”

“Uh…” Steve, predictable as always, turns beet red. “Yeah, I mean… well…”

“What he means,” Nat interjects, “is that he can be mentally unwell all day long and the serum can’t fix it.”

Steve can’t avoid the irritated tic in his jaw but he can at least avoid looking at Natasha. “Thanks for that.”

Nat cocks her head to the right, studying him. “No point in lying about it.”

“Indeed,” Thor says with a huge smile. Steve’s not sure what to make of that, the contradiction that is Thor’s very personality. “I suggest a concoction from Asgard, made just for situations such as this one! I’ll have some transported to Earth right away-”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary, thank you,” Steve gets in before the god of thunder can actually order him liquor from heaven. What _is_ his life at this point?

“Surely there must be something troubling you. These humans seem to enjoy - what did you call it? ‘Talk therapy?’ Or I think Stark referred to it as ‘a load of horse shit.’”

“A dump full of horse shit!” Tony calls from the other side of the room, and Steve winces. Thor is loud.

“Well, there you have it. Perhaps this horse shit can help you?”

Steve shakes his head and gets up, stretching to hide his discomfort. “No, I don’t think it can. I appreciate you, all of you, trying to help, but I think this is something I’ll have to handle on my own.”

Natasha doesn’t actually know what’s going on, but he still feels speared by her gaze. Opened up. Too vulnerable.

“Up to you, Rogers,” she says. “But you know we’re here if you need us.”

Sam raises his glass of beer. “Hear, hear!”

Clint frowns. “Are you not watching the movie? _Sixteen Candles_? It’s a classic. I picked it just for you!”

“Not tonight, guys. I’m gonna go and try to get some sleep. Think on my… problem.”

Thor waves a hand at the rest of the team. “Let him go if he wishes to go. Sometimes a man must spend some time alone to gather his thoughts.”

“Thank you, Thor.” _I think._

Thor nods. “I will bring Asgardian spirits next time, though, Captain!”

Steve waves back as he exits the team floor. “Of course.”

But it’ll take a lot more than the nectar of the gods to cure what ails him.

And when Bucky doesn’t come to him for the third night in a row, he despairs. He has either well and truly lost it, or Bucky is in trouble. Or uninterested in communing with Steve again. Steve hasn’t felt this helpless since he weighed ninety-five pounds, receiving another 4F from the Army. It’s a shame Hitler’s not there to punch, because that would certainly help more than Asgardian alcohol.

The team is surely confused when they find a note stating, cryptically, _I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry about me_ , on the kitchen table the following morning, but Steve can’t quite find it in himself to care.

***

Steve helps with the town, this time in the rebuilding efforts. The locals know who he is, of course, and welcome his aid, but he has to be honest enough with himself to acknowledge that he’s only waiting for nightfall. The hill calls to him like a siren, just around the corner and yet so far away. It’s become an obsession in only a short time.

 _SHIELD psychologists really would have a field day with me_ , he thinks ruefully as he chops logs from the forest. The work is mindless and time is forgiving, and before he knows it, the sun is starting to dip below the horizon, and his nerves are alight with anticipation. He’s loathe to admit, but they’re also alight with fear. What if Bucky - or the Bucky-thing, at least - doesn’t show? What if he never gets to see-feel-hear-experience the caress of lightning again?

He has to try. Otherwise, he’s going to go insane.

The hillside is just as he’d left it. Twilight dew dots each blade of grass, making the hilltop sparkle in the light from the early-evening stars. It’s so peaceful and beautiful out here, the view overlooking the lake and the night sky smiling down upon him. He yearns for a different smile, though, a wide grin that used to make the ladies - and some gents - swoon back in the thirties and forties.

Bucky.

Half an hour into his vigil, he starts getting antsy. Bucky’s not showing - Steve knows that somewhere deep in his gut, for whatever reason, Bucky doesn’t know he’s here… or he’s unable to meet him. But he has things to say anyway. Maybe it’ll help him get through the next… however long it takes until Bucky brings him back here.

He’d never had the courage to say it back then, but maybe he can say it now. Maybe this is all his subconscious’ scheme to help him get it out, to process Bucky’s death… something. At the very least, he can use it that way.

“Look,” Steve finally begins. “I don’t know if you’re out there or not. I don’t know if I’m losing it or if it’s real or if I’m just… still under the ice, maybe, having fever dreams. Or dead. I don’t know… much of anything, really. Life’s just… it’s insane, Buck. God, I wish you were here to see it. What’s changed, what’s stayed the same.”

He takes a deep breath and risks a glance out there, where the face - Bucky’s masked face - had floated in the sky the last two times he was here. It’s still absent, but Steve soldiers on anyway.

“We didn’t talk about our feelings like this back when you and I were kids, you know? It’s weird to be saying any of this out loud… though I feel like a coward because I’m not exactly saying it to your… uh, your face. But there’s some things you need to know, Buck. And I’ve gotta say ‘em, for my own peace of mind, if nothing else.

“When I found you in Kreischberg, you were a shell of who you once were. You think I didn’t see it, but I did. The look in your eyes… PTSD, shell-shock, whatever… it had you. And your dad had committed suicide over it, back when Becca was a baby and you were barely old enough to remember. _I_ barely remember, but I recall your mama’s screams when she found him. Heard it down the street, can you believe that?

“Anyway, I worried about you. Knew that kind of thing can run in families, and I just… you tried so hard, Buck. So hard to be normal, but you wouldn’t have been, even if you’d survived the war. And I don’t know what’s happened to you now, but I fear for you again. And it’s driving me mad. I wish I could just… know. One way or another. So I can finally say goodbye, if I need to.

“I loved you, you know. Not like a brother, either. Like I was supposed to love dames. Like I could’ve loved Peggy, given time. But you… from the very beginning. If only it had been that easy, you know? But if I’d been your dame, or you mine… we wouldn’t have found each other in the war, and we wouldn’t be here now. Funny how things work out like that.”

_Are they working out like that, though? Sure seems like you’re talkin’ to yourself out here, pal._

It’s almost like he can hear Bucky’s voice in his head again, it’s so spot-on. But it’s not the same, not like it was in the lightning storm. It may be in his head, but this time it’s also _from_ his head.

He sighs, pulls a piece of grass from the soil, and idly starts twirling it in his hands. Hands that are too slender for his big, ungainly body.

“Life is… not what I thought it’d be. Havin’ this body… It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The world still doesn’t see me. You were the only one who ever did. And I wonder sometimes… Did you feel the same? Could you have, if you’d had the chance to love me back? I think so, and that hurts more than anything.”

He’s whispering now, on the verge of tears. Time to wrap up this conversation, time to leave… if he can. If he can make himself do that.

“I miss you,” he sobs into the night air. “God, how I miss you. You were… Bucky, you were everything. _Everything_. And maybe… maybe this is how I finally let go.”

By now, Steve’s voice is lost in a muddle of stuttering breaths, damn near a whimper, and the tears are flowing freely. It’s the first time he’s cried since the night after, the night in the bar when Peggy’d told him to allow Bucky the ‘dignity’ of his choice. As if falling into a ravine to a bloody death had anything to do with dignity.

It doesn’t matter, though. Bucky’s either gone or he’s not, but Steve has to face forward. If Bucky comes again… good. If he can figure out a way, get enough information to pull Bucky from whatever hell he’s holed up in, good.

If not… at least he’d gotten a chance to say it.

Steve falls asleep there in the grass, and doesn’t dream of Austria.

***

Weeks go by. Then months. Nothing from Bucky. No time slips, no dreams. Nothing.

The others are getting worried about him, too. Something’s more than just ‘off’ with their Captain. He’s a flat-out nervous wreck.

Sam - because of course they’d elect Sam to do it - approaches him one day while Steve’s eating lunch at the Tower and staring morosely out the window.

“I’ve gotta ask, and this ain’t just for them, either. What’s going on?”

Steve shakes his head and continues staring out the window like Sam isn’t even there. He feels shitty for it, but there’s no way he can explain this to anyone without getting locked up in the loony bin.

“I mean, you ain’t here,” Sam continues. “You’re off in some other place most of the time. They’re talkin’ about benchin’ you.”

That gets his attention. “Benching me?” He looks at Sam incredulously.

“You heard me. They want you to get professional help.”

He rolls his eyes. “What, so they can tell me I’m repressing my feelings? Sam, just… just leave it be, okay?”

Sam eyes him shrewdly. “Only if you make me a promise.”

“Sure.”

“Be present. At least around the others, and especially in the field.”

Yeah, he can do that.

“Of course. I don’t want to be a liability.” Not that Steve thinks he is, but it’s good to let Sam know that.

“Good. I’m here if you’re ready to get help. I’ll point you in the right direction. And I’m here if you ever need to talk. You know that.”

That’s been the case since the downfall of SHIELD a year ago, and Steve hasn’t taken him up on it, but he doesn’t say that.

“I’ll think about it.”

The knowing smile Steve gets in return doesn’t make him feel much better, but it is what it is. And Sam... Sam’s the best man Steve’s ever known, aside from Bucky.

They eat a quiet lunch together. It’s good to have his friend here by his side. Just knowing that he’ll be there if Steve gets to the point where he can’t take it anymore… it’s a lot.

***

Steve doesn’t go back to the site again, figuring he’d just be tempting fate by doing so. He tries to keep the idea out of his mind, because what good will it do? Whole lotta nothing, that’s what.

But one day, they’re out in the field - fighting Doombots yet again, how very creative - when he feels that familiar tug. The one he’s been waiting for. The one he’s been obsessing about. The one he can’t afford to feel right now, not in the middle of battle with the team watching him. What if he disappears again? That’ll open up some serious questions that Steve does not want to answer - or want answered, for that matter.

“Tony, hard left! They’re congregating up there, headed to the top of the building and looking for something. See if you can head ‘em off.”

He’s trying like hell to hang on, because the pull is getting stronger and stronger (and he _wants,_ oh how he wants) but he needs to make it to the end of the fight. Even if it means flying out afterwards, he can’t leave now. Not his team.

Damn duty coming before his own heart. Steve hopes he has the courage to change that someday.

“Nat, do we need to call in a code green?”

He wipes sweat from his face. It feels like it’s dripping down his body in rivers with the effort of holding back, of staying in place.

“No, Tony’s got it under control. We’re almost done here.”

Steve knows she can see him from her vantage point on the adjacent building; he sways unsteadily as he dodges an incoming hit. Shit, he’s losing it.

“Are you alright, Steve?”

“I’m fine,” he snaps, and uh-oh, that’s not good.

“I’m takin’ you to get looked at after this. You look like a recruit, green as the day is long. Be careful, Rogers.”

He breathes deeply, feeling his lungs start to constrict. “You’ve always got my back, Nat…”

“Steve?” The sound goes tinny in his ears, ringing in his head; he can’t hold on much longer.

Quite frankly, he doesn’t _want_ to hold on much longer.

“Steve, can you hear me? Oh god, Stark, I need you! He’s… fading, something’s happening. Like he’s a ghost…”

That’s the last thing Steve hears. Then nothing.

***

And time

         s

              l

                    i

 

                          p

 

                              s

 

                   

 

***

Then Steve’s on the hillside again. And the show’s already started.

Immediately, he feels at peace. He’s utterly convinced this is dangerous stuff, that he’s playing with, well, lightning, but it scratches that itch that’s been hounding him for so many months now. And the Presence is there, too, and it feels… comfortable. Comforting. Wonderfully familiar. The blues and purples and reds, the calm of the night sky… and those eyes. Bucky’s eyes. Eyes he hadn’t seen since 1945.

_Steve._

“Yeah. I’m here.”

_Why did you fight me._

It comes out as a flat statement. Like the Bucky-thing doesn’t know how to speak properly. “I was in the middle of a fight.”

_Fight? Why do you fight?_

“That’s what I do, Buck. It’s what I’ve always done.”

_Steve._

“Yes?”

_Am I a Bucky?_

Steve gives a despondent laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re a Bucky.”

The Bucky-thing grunts, noncommittal. Then: _Steve?_

“Yeah, Buck?”

 _It hurts. I’m always falling. How do I know you? We were… augh! Memories hurt. They HURT_ , he says again, and Steve’s ready to pull out his hair. Bucky’s caught somewhere, trapped. In pain, psychological and physical. But he’s useless here, like this.

Steve swallows, throat dry. “I don’t know, Buck. I don’t understand how we got here. I believe that you’re real, it’s just…”

_Steve, it hurts. Everywhere. I’m falling again. And again. And I always end up back here, in this cage. Where am I? Who am I?_

He closes his eyes, fighting back tears. No time for that now; Bucky needs him.

“Bucky, how do I find you? Can you tell me anything?”

_It’s cold. The wind bites me. A man screams… I think it’s my name. It echoes. I hurt. My arm… they took it! They took it!_

The Bucky-thing is blabbering now, clearly in full panic-mode. Steve has to soothe him if he wants answers.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. Just focus on me. Steve. Your Steve.”

_Mine?_

“Yours.” A tear rolls down Steve’s face; he’s unable to hold back any longer. “Where are you, Buck? Think.”

_I remember… things. Sometimes. Hallucinations or pieces of the past. Whatever they are… they did something to me. I was a person once, wasn’t I?_

Oh, god.

“Yes,” he whispers, unable to speak any louder. “You were. You _are_. I need to find you.”

_I don’t have the key here. Only you can find it._

“How?”

_The storm will tell you._

“That doesn’t make sense.”

_Doesn’t it, though?_

Well, the storm is talking to him now. In Bucky’s voice, no less. Stranger things have happened.

“I just…” Steve kicks at the ground in frustration, scuffing the perfect grass. “I need more than that.”

_Find yourself in… spirit? They told me that._

“When? Who?”

_The monsters._

Oh, _god_.

“Who are the monsters, Buck?”

_I DON’T KNOW!_

“Okay, okay. You don’t know. It’s okay.”

_I’m still falling._

“I know. And I’m going to be there to catch you. Just… give me time.”

_Go now, Steve. I can’t hang on. They’re coming._

Alarm bells go off in Steve’s head. “Who’s ‘they’? Who’s coming, Buck?”

_Go now! I’ll be back if I can._

And then he’s in his bed again, tucked in tight like he’d been sleeping the whole time. And time itself ticks by, slow and inexorable. It’s evening in New York, at Avengers Tower, and sanity comes back little by little. Awareness. Only the last thing he knew, he was in the middle of a fight on the other side of the globe. Broad daylight.

Nothing makes _sense._

_***_

“You need to see someone.”

Great. This again.

“Because disappearing into thin air was my fault, is that it?”

Nat purses her lips but otherwise her expression doesn’t change. “For a lot of reasons, Rogers. And you know exactly what they are.”

Sort of.

“So what? I’m going to be passed from your therapists to Bruce to Tony and back again? Like some sort of science experiment?”

“What happened to you was potentially traumatic, and so are a lot of things in your life. It’d be good for you,” she reasons.

But he’s stubborn if nothing else. “That’s okay. I’ll pass.” It’s said in a voice that brooks no argument.

“Fine. Banner’s waiting for you, O mighty science experiment.”

He rolls his eyes. Nat’s not usually so pushy. He wonders what’s gotten into her, and what it is about this situation in particular. She doesn’t know the details of what happened; even his report to Fury was limited in that regard. Nobody knows the truth, and he prefers to keep it that way.

Bruce greets him with a smile and a pat on the shoulder. Steve relaxes, but just barely. As much as he loves Natasha, Steve has to keep his guard up around her sometimes. She’s nearly as stubborn as Steve himself.

 _But not quite_ , Bucky says in his head.

 _Shut up,_ he quips back.

Bruce clears his throat and leads him to some bench that looks like… a torture device, honestly. “This is called an MRI. We’ve adapted it a bit, so it can do more than the standard model. I’m going to show you a series of pictures and talk you through a little bit of what happened, and in the meantime I’ll be looking at your brain. We want to make sure you’re okay first of all, and second of all, find out what happened to you.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Tony and me, and a host of doctors and scientists from… what remains of SHIELD.”

He stiffens, and Bruce picks up on it. “Don’t worry,” Bruce quickly reassures him. “They’re not going to be coming in here and poking and prodding. We’re keeping them away. It’ll just be me and Tony a little while later.”

Somehow, that doesn’t help much, but Steve lies back and takes a deep breath as Bruce presses a button, sending his body sliding underneath the screen. It’s confined and claustrophobic; thank goodness that’s not one of the things Steve supposedly needs therapy for.

“Alright. I want you to walk me through what happened.”

Well, this could be problematic. Steve doesn’t _want_ to tell them what happened. Not the truth, at least not the whole truth. Should he mention the hillside? The lightning? Bucky? It’s likely Natasha looked into his little trip a few months ago and knows that he’d gone back to the site, at the very least.

So he decides to talk about being drawn to the hillside and then pulled back there, but not the rest. And he wonders if Bruce can tell he’s lying, or at least leaving out parts of the story.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Banner remarks from outside the machine, voice echoing lightly along the walls of the interior. “It’s not… hmm.” Steve can just picture him, thumb tucked underneath his chin, index finger resting on his upper lip, in full concentration mode.

Tony comes in as Bruce is trying to figure out what is probably a complex problem - way beyond Steve’s comprehension, anyway - and they get back to work, showing him photos of a variety of things… naked women included. (Which makes him blush bright red; thank goodness they can’t see his face.) But he does make a noise when that flashes by.

“Don’t worry, friend. We’re not trying to taint the great Captain America. You can handle a little nudity from time to time, right?”

 _Not that kind_ , he thinks but doesn’t say.

“Right.” Shit, what if Stark can read his mind with this MRI thing? He has no idea what it’s capable of.

“Are you gonna take me out of this thing anytime soon?”

They ignore him and start whispering. Steve rolls his eyes - is everyone out to annoy him today? - but then remembers that he can likely listen in on the conversation, as long as it’s not too quiet. And as long as they’re not looking at his brain activity, because they’d probably be able to tell, and then he’d be caught.

As it turns out, they don’t catch him eavesdropping, but he still feels like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar.

“It’s just… like a… maybe?” Bruce asks, altogether too quiet.

“Yeah, but if you look at the anterior cingulate… ex… not like we can’t… what it would be.”

Dammit, if only they’d speak up a little bit.

Bruce sighs heavily. “I have no idea why he’d want to do that,” he says a little bit louder, and Steve figures they’re probably talking about how he’s a lying liar who lies. But that’s better than them knowing about Bucky. Though his desire to protect his friend is admittedly at war with his desire to rescue him, and if Bruce and Tony can help him find Bucky…

But how would they even manage to experience it? It only happens when Bucky plucks him from reality, and it only happens to him.

“We should… doctor…”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. He might be able to tell us something. Damn,” Tony says, and smacks something hard enough for it to go skittering across the floor. “I hate it when I’m not smart enough to figure something out on my own.”

“Not even on your own. I have no idea here, either.”

“Right, well, guess we should get on the phone, then.”

“Right.” Banner turns his attention to the MRI, and the tone of his voice changes from problem-solving mode to concerned physician mode. “It looks like we’re going to have to call in another expert. But we’re not going to need you again for awhile.”

The bench Steve’s been lying on grinds to life and slides out of the MRI. Claustrophobic or not, that’d been a rather unpleasant experience.

“Alright,” Steve says slowly. “But will you keep me updated? If you find something?” His voice comes out more anxious than he’d like.

“Of course,” Bruce says, and waves a hand dismissively.

Maybe they’ll find something. He certainly hopes so.

***

The next timeslip doesn’t happen for two more weeks, but when it does, it’s sudden and feels urgent in a way it hasn’t before. And when he gets to the hillside, he gasps with a mixture of horror and fear.

The sky is _sick._ There’s no other word for it. Instead of the brilliant hues from before, it’s yellow-green, surrounded by waves of near jet-black that cover the stars. The Bucky-thing’s face is barely an outline, like he’s fading. Steve feels his stomach drop down and through him to the ground. What if Bucky’s in real trouble?

The lightning is frazzling this time, too, feels like it’s burning his skin a little. It tingles, but not in a pleasant way as it lights him up from the inside out. Just this side of pain, really, not that Steve is a stranger to pain. But here, in his place of peace and solitude… and Bucky, or at least the Bucky-thing… _shit_.

 _I don’t think… nothing is real. Is it? Nothing_. Bucky sounds like he’s panicking, which sets Steve’s heart aflutter.

“I don’t know, Buck. I never knew. Never understood this thing, whatever it is between us.” And that’s true in a million different ways.

_They’re doing it to punish me, you know._

“Who’s ‘they,’ Buck?”

_The people who took me._

“In Kreischberg?”

_I don’t know this place._

So he still doesn’t remember who he is.

_Steve, oh god, it hurts so bad. They’re… taking it. Again and again and again._

“Taking what, Buck? I need you to slow down. Help me help you.”

 _THERE IS NO HELPING ME!_ Bucky starts to sob, big, gulping things, the kind of crying that toddlers do.

“No, Buck, don’t cry. Hang in there. For me, okay?” The panic is overtaking Steve now, too, like it’s contagious. How in the hell can he help Bucky? Surely there’s an answer to the riddle. _The storm will tell you_ , he’d said.

“Buck? I need you to listen, okay?”

Sniffles. Silence. Then: _Okay._

“Good. Thank you. Do you know how to get out of there? Wherever you are?”

_I… I think so._

“Can you tell me?”

_No._

“Why not?”

_They programmed it out of me._

Steve takes a step back, horrified. “Pro… programmed?”

_Chains. Ropes. They beat me into submission. Shocked me. Water, so much water. And cold. I remember the cold. I’m still cold, Steve. Help me._

Oh god, what happened to him?

“I’m gonna get you out, I promise. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything at all?”

 _Just listen to the storm_.

There it is again. _Listen to the storm_. “I don’t know how to speak its language.”

_It’s universal, Steve. The only language that matters._

The only language that matters. He doesn’t understand.

The lightning crackles in the sky, through Steve and down into the ground, and he and Bucky scream simultaneously. _They know I’m here. They know I’m out_.

Steve yells his frustration into the sickly green sky. “How do I help you?!”

 _You don’t. There’s nothing you can do._ Bucky sobs again. _Please go, Steve. Leave me be._

“Bucky, no, I can help you! Just… tell me how,” he yells into the sky, impotent and utterly shattered.

_There’s no helping me. I don’t even know who you are. I’ll be gone soon. Live your life without me._

“I can’t… Bucky, I can’t do that!”

_But you can. You will._

“NO!”

But that’s it. In the blink of an eye, he’s back at home in his bed. He wants to cry, wants to scream, wants to punch the wall, but he’s just too exhausted. Instead, Steve stares morosely at the walls, the perfect white walls of his room at the Tower. He ignores the increasingly desperate knocks at the door and doesn’t sleep until even his super body can’t stay awake any longer.

***

When he awakens after a solid twenty hours of sleep, it’s with a brand new attitude. That’s partially because Steve’s an optimistic person at heart, but it’s mostly because he’s the most stubborn sonofabitch alive and is unwilling to give up on Bucky now.

The fact of the matter is, Steve’s done with this. He hasn’t been hallucinating; this is all really happening, and it’s time to face it head-on, the way he should’ve been doing from the start. The fact that his friends are looking into his ‘disappearances’ lends truth to that, and instead of sinking deeper into depression, he finally decides to fucking do something about it. And he steadfastly ignores the voice in his head repeating _it’s too late now._ He’s damn good at ignoring things he doesn’t want to face, too.

So Steve decides to go digging.

First thing’s first: Natasha. And that’s not a conversation he looks forward to, but it’s his best chance at finding information.

He drags her to a café out in Brooklyn, figuring he might as well enjoy seeing the old neighborhood while he’s here. Maybe the nostalgia will give him the gritty resolve he’ll need to see this through. The old brownstone - the first apartment they’d had, nothing more than a glorified one-room tenement, really - is gone, but the other place they’d gotten later on is still standing, the place in Bedford-Stuyvesant where Steve Rogers had first realized he was in love with Bucky Barnes. It’s been restored, and is in great shape, still recognizable after all these years.

The café, which according to Google is supposed to have ‘the best coffee in Brooklyn,’ is in Brooklyn Heights, so he meanders along and still arrives fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Nat is, of course, waiting for him already.

“Hey,” she says as he sits down with his plain black coffee. She raises an eyebrow as if to say, _You come to fancy coffee shops for plain coffee?_

“Old wartime habit. It’s comforting.”

“Right. Well, you can drink mud, and I’ll have my caramel macchiato and be much happier.”

He rolls his eyes fondly and they sip in silence for a few minutes. Before too long, though, Nat’s curiosity gets the best of her. Steve’s surprised it takes her that long.

“So why’d you ask me here? Surely you’re not interested in dating me.” She blows Steve a kiss, which he snatches and plants right on his cheek, a faint smile on his lips.

“No offense, Nat, but you’re not exactly my type.”

“Not a tall brunette with plump, red lips, you mean?”

_Something like that._

He feels the tips of his ears turn hot. “Uh, well…”

Her head tilts slightly to the left as she studies him carefully. Taking him apart with her gaze. “There’s something going on here, Rogers. And I think you want my help with it, right?”

He sighs and sets down his coffee. “Right.”

“Alright,” she says slowly, like she’s talking to a child. “Well, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

“I know. And I know you know things have been weird for me for a while.”

“That’s an understatement,” she mutters into her cup.

“Anyway,” Steve says, suddenly feeling a need to get on with it, “Yes, I do have a favor to ask of you. But you’ve gotta keep this quiet, okay?”

“Sure. You can trust me.”

He’s not entirely certain of that, but Steve’s a big fan of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and Natasha’d been a good friend throughout the D.C. fiasco, when SHIELD fell, and his heart fell with it. She’d released those files to the public, had shown her own _face_ in public, and that had been an incredible feat of courage.  

“I mean it, Nat. No matter what you find, I need you to come to me first. Please?” He puts every ounce of Steve Rogers earnestness into his voice. “This is important to me on a personal level.”

She looks him square in the eye, expressionless. “Yeah, I’m getting that,” she says, sounding a little surprised and off-center. Steve’s always amazed at how she schools her expression so well no matter how she feels, but by now he knows her well enough to recognize the subtlest of signs. Nat has no idea what’s coming.  

“Alright. You’re, uh, you’re gonna think I’m a madman-”

“I kinda already do.”

“Yeah, well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. So… do you remember the night we fought the bugs? You told me to leave, clear my head.”

“I remember.”

“Well. I walked through the forest and down to the lake, a ways down the path. And I sat there and just… something happened to me, Nat. Time stopped, I swear it did. Or it slowed down. And there was a storm, and a face in the clouds…”

“And you came back to us almost catatonic for a while. Alright. It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but I’m not sure why you didn’t go to the others with this after it happened.”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. Not until it happened again, and the second time the face talked to me. Talked _inside_ me, Nat. And it was Bucky. The face… the eyes match, and so does the voice. He’s trapped somewhere, doesn’t know who or where he is, but he knows me.” Steve leans back and closes his eyes. “He knows me. He grabbed me from sleep and talked to me, and he’s taken me a couple more times. I flew out to see if I could make him appear, but it didn’t work. I have no way to know when or why or how this happens, but… it’s Bucky.”

Natasha lets out a breath and takes a sip of coffee, like she’s contemplating her response. How _does_ one respond to this kind of information?

“Well… I still think your best bet would be to go to Tony and Bruce. And Doctor Strange should know about it, too.”

“Doctor… who?”

“Strange.” She waves it away. “Not important right now. Look, it’s not that I don’t believe you, I’m just not sure I’m the right person to come to with this.”

“It’s not just about that, Nat. I actually think the way to find him is to find out who put him… wherever he is. Then maybe we can go to the rest of the team.”

“So you want me to look for information on Barnes?”

“Yes. Go through your contacts and see if you can find anything to suggest he might have survived that fall.”

“That would’ve been impossible. He fell off a cliff.”

“I know,” he sighs. “Believe me, I know that better than anybody. I was there.”

She reaches out to gently grasp his bicep. “Yeah, you were. I can’t even imagine, Steve.”

_And you don’t even know how I felt about him. How I feel._

“Anyway,” he says, clearing his throat. “Yes. If you can find something, anything… I’d be forever grateful.”

She regards him over her cup for another moment before nodding in acquiescence. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Nat.” He smiles softly at her. “I really appreciate this.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Rogers. If I find out he survived... “

The rest remains unsaid. If Bucky survived that fall, then that means Steve had abandoned him to his fate, and probably an unpleasant one, if the current situation is anything to go by.

But one thing at a time. Let Nat work, and wait for Bucky to pluck him out of reality again.

If he’s not gone for good.

***

As it turns out, neither Nat nor Bruce nor this Strange fella gets a chance to find any information for Steve. He’s gone, whisked away in the middle of the night, just a few days later.

The sky, Bucky’s home, is different yet again. The lightning’s still there, but it’s slow as sap, not rushing through him like a storm. It’s soft, like time. Meaningless.

And the colors - _oh_ , the colors. They’re muted, lilac instead of violet, azure instead of midnight blue. A little like the dawn, a little like the dusk, but not either one. Not really. Just… a moment out of time and place where nothing makes sense, except one thing. One important and utterly devastating thing.

Bucky is fading.

 _Steve_ , says the voice inside his head, sad and weary. _I’m almost gone. For good this time._

“No,” Steve replies, but it’s mostly in resignation. He knew he was too late despite his foolish hope. “We have time. We’re gonna find you. Hang in there.”

_Don’t have much longer left. Can’t… not magic, Steve._

Magic. _Magic_. He feels like a fool. Bruce had told him… and he hadn’t believed it. And now he remembers, vaguely, a mention of a Dr. Strange. Eidetic memory and all, he’d still somehow forgotten. Lost it. Dropped it into a bucket because it was just… impossible. A tale for children.

He should’ve known better.

“How do I find you?” he asks again. Knowing there’s… magic mixed up in it somehow doesn’t mean he’s got the know-how.

_The storm. The language. I know you know._

“But… I DON’T!” Steve screams, a blood-curdling sound borne of frustration and fear. He’s close to understanding - he knows he is.

_I remember now._

Steve’s eyes grow wide as he stares at Bucky’s unblinking eyes, the sparkles of the stars that live at the center of them. “You remember?”

_I know where I am. Why I’m here. They’re punishing me. It’s worse now that I remember._

“Where are you? God, help me find you!”

_In… limbo. I don’t know. But I’m Bucky Barnes, and you’re Steve Rogers, and I’ve been out of cryofreeze for three years and two months. I failed them, and they put me here as punishment._

That opens… so many questions, far too many, and none of them relevant at this point. Bucky’s too short on time for Steve to be asking who ‘they’ are.

“How do I get you out?” he asks again in desperation.

_I’m fading, Steve. Leave me behind._

Oh no - _no_ , not this again.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Steve says, but that energy, the grit, the determination, is fading within him, too.

He’d found Bucky, alive after all this time, only to lose him again.

_I’m fading, Stevie. It’s the end of the line for me._

Oh, _god._

Steve falls to his knees in the grass. If he’d needed any proof that Bucky knew, that Bucky understood what they’d been to each other, that Bucky’s as real as his own beating heart, there it was. The end of the line.

The dam breaks. He’d cried before, but this is… beyond crying. This is devastation. The hole in his heart where Bucky had lived and died had opened again, larger, and now that’s about to be ripped open once more. He doesn’t know if he’ll survive this time around.

_Goodbye, Stevie._

“No,” he sobs, whimpers, so quiet, yet knowing that Bucky can hear him. “Bucky.” The sobs wrack his body, making him shudder, lose his breath. But before it tears out of him, Steve says it one last time: “I love you.”

And on a hillside by a forest and a lake, this nondescript, humble place, a door opens.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve knows where he is. It’s the site of his worst nightmare, after all. He relives the memory almost every night and swims through it just like he is now. Bucky holding the shield. Bucky shot out the side. Bucky hanging on for dear life as Steve reaches out for him. 

 

Bucky falling.

 

A few minutes pass. Then time doesn’t just stop or slip. Time  _ rewinds _ . He’s pulled inexorably backward to the front of the car, too goddamn far away to do anything about anything, unable to change history no matter how hard he tries. The scene replays before him. Bucky holding the shield. Bucky shot. Bucky hanging on. 

 

And so it goes. 

 

Steve tries - heaven help him, he tries. Tries to make a difference, tries to change the course of history - even if it doesn’t matter, even if it does nothing in the real world, he has to try, doesn’t he? Bucky looks at him desperately every time; there’s none of the fight he’d had in 1945 left in him. That was beaten out of him by whatever hell he’s lived through since then, hell Steve could never even imagine. Bucky’s eyes are dead, the sea-blue of them fading to a dull, lifeless grey. He’s ready to give up, and Steve sees it. 

 

So Steve decides to do the only thing he can think of. The old way hasn’t worked, but maybe this will.  _ Maybe _ . It’s the only chance they’ve got - the only chance to save Bucky. And if it doesn’t work, his sacrifice will have been worth it. They’ll die together, like they should’ve all those years ago.

 

The shot rings out again, Bucky blasted over the edge and hanging from the rail. He reaches out to Steve, stretching and straining, and Steve thinks  _ it’s now or never. _

 

Instead of staying safe on the train, like he’s supposed to do, like he did seventy years ago, like he’s done over and over again until he’s sick with it, he kneels down and sits on the train floor, legs dangling off the edge. Then he reaches for Bucky again. 

 

“Take my hand!” he yells over the screaming of the wind. 

 

“Why? What good’ll it do?” Bucky yells back. “God, just let me go, Steve.” Steve can tell Bucky’s trying not to hope. But the human spirit is tenacious, and that spark is still there. Despite this. Despite everything. 

 

“Do you trust me?” Steve asks softly, too softly for anyone to hear, but Bucky hears him nonetheless. 

 

“With my very soul, you know that,” Bucky responds without hesitation.

 

“Then hang on!”

 

Bucky pushes as much effort out of his tired body as he can and manages to grab on to Steve’s hand. Then he mouths  _ now what? _ at Steve as his friend squeezes tightly. 

 

The thing is, they can’t save themselves. Even Captain America’s super strength can’t pull him back. They have to fall. And Steve feels it, like destiny come to take him home. This was how it should’ve gone down. 

 

“Together?”

 

Bucky closes his eyes, and a tear leaks from one of them. “Together.”

 

Bucky falls, and Steve follows him into the snow.

 

***

 

Cold. So cold it burns. And pain, the kind of pain that comes not from back alley fights, but from living close to death for years and years. Oh, how it hurts. 

 

But he’s alive. And more importantly, there’s breath next to him. He can feel the heat of the body it belongs to, can even smell him - Bucky, his best friend. His home. His everything.

 

He groans as he sits up, blinks the falling snow out of his eyelashes, and looks around. They’re… not in Austria, that’s for sure. There’s nothing but low, rolling ground and snow as far as the eye can see. 

 

Steve gulps in a deep breath, forgetting about the pain coursing through his body and swallowing down the terror that threatens to consume him entirely. This is like falling from the frying pan and into the fire. 

 

Bucky sits up next to him and he finally takes a moment to look. The mask is back, blackness covering his mouth and nose, but his eyes are still visible and still familiar as ever, changed into a silver-grey by the light bouncing off of the snow. He’s dressed in a black tac vest with combat pants and tightly laced-up boots, wearing a sidearm holster and a back harness but no guns. 

 

Oh, and a metal arm, exposed to the wintry air.

 

“What…?” Steve asks, overwhelmed. 

 

Bucky sighs and glances down at his hands, already turning blue from the cold. “It’s a long story. We’ve gotta find shelter first.”

 

Yeah, that’s true. Still. “How did we… where… what?” 

 

Oh, this is so confusing. 

 

“I’ll tell you later. Shelter. Now.” 

 

Bucky makes a Herculean effort to stand, then leans down and grabs Steve’s hand. His metal arm is strong, and Bucky pulls a bit too hard, and suddenly Steve is standing in his space, near enough to feel the heat seeping out of him. They stare into each other’s eyes and time stands still again, though not in the same way as before. More like the world tilting on its axis as Steve realizes that he’d told Bucky his secret. Twice, even if the first time didn’t count for much. 

 

He doesn’t know how long they stand there staring at each other, but it feels like forever, and somehow not long enough. Steve’s mind is hazy, numb and full of fuzz, and he isn’t sure if that’s because the cold is getting to him or because Bucky’s warmth is.

 

“We need to go,” Bucky whispers. Under the mask, his voice is muted, unlike it was on the hillside or on the train, but it’s still him. 

 

“Bucky, I…”

 

Bucky growls at him, and Steve takes a step back, putting his hands up. 

 

“Later,” he states, and immediately turns to walk in the other direction, forcing Steve to keep up.

 

“Where are we?” Steve asks. “I mean, do you know? Can you find shelter?”

 

“I know,” Bucky says grimly. “And yeah, I can.” 

 

They walk in silence, through snowdrifts piled up to their chests in some places. What Steve had once assumed were low, rolling hills turn out to be larger than expected; they’d been hidden by the deep snow. At a few points along the way, Bucky stops and sniffs the air like a hunting dog, then knocks aside some snow and stares up into the pale midday sun. Steve thanks the heavens they landed here during the daytime. 

 

Finally, Bucky makes a hard right turn, and up ahead, at the bottom of a steep hill, Steve can see a cave, partially blocked by more snowdrifts. They approach it swiftly, Bucky much less concerned about predators - of either the four- or two-legged variety, apparently - than Steve is. 

 

Steve walks in and waits for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, while Bucky stands next to him patiently. Once he can see, Steve realizes that the cave twists and makes its way underground after the first hundred feet. 

 

Steve lifts his eyebrows as Bucky turns around. Bucky’s eyes crinkle like he’s grinning wide, and Steve wants to see it so badly it hurts, almost as much as the cold itself. He wants to rip that mask off, kiss the daylights out of his best friend, and sag against him in relief, but he does none of those things. 

 

“Home sweet home,” Bucky says, then marches down underground. Steve shrugs and follows.

 

It’s dank and nearly as cold as it is outside, only without the wet snow and wild wind. Steve doesn’t know what to expect, but it’s not this.

 

It’s just like a cellar, an unnaturally square room with a cot against one wall and a bucket in the corner for bodily functions. In the center is a pile of old, dry wood, probably kindling. There are canned foods on a shelf across the room, what looks like beets and potatoes. Judging by the amount of dust down here, Steve guesses this place has been empty a long time. 

 

Bucky sits on the cot and puts his head in his hands. Steve finds it odd that Bucky doesn’t seem bothered by the cold - he’s not shivering like Steve is, and that arm has got to be like ice on his face. 

 

He doesn’t know what else to do, feels helpless and lost, so he sits on the bed next to Bucky. It’s silent for a while, but Steve knows he can’t allow himself to drift off to sleep just yet. They need to warm up first. The old wood might not do the trick, at least not for long. 

 

Shit. 

 

“We can’t stay here long.” 

 

“I know,” Bucky says, sounding weary. 

 

“Will it be too dangerous to sleep, do you think?”

 

“We’re gonna have to after we warm up a little. It’s a long way back to the base.”

 

The base. Oh, so many questions. 

 

“And they’ll know I made it home.”

 

Bucky swallows audibly. Steve dares to wrap his arm around his friend, and lets out a contented sigh when Bucky leans into him, unashamed. 

 

“Is this real?” Steve whispers. 

 

“Yeah. It’s real.”

 

“You’re real?”

 

Bucky doesn’t respond, just takes Steve’s chilly hand in his own and places it over his chest. Steve can feel Bucky’s heart beating even through the tac vest. It’s strong. True. 

 

“I need… wow. I don’t even know where to start, Buck.” 

 

“Yeah. I don’t, either.” 

 

“Maybe… try from the beginning?”  _ Wherever that is. _

 

Bucky yawns, then moves away, taking his body heat with him, and Steve nearly cries out as he does. Then Bucky reaches out and pulls Steve up so that they’re standing side-by-side. 

 

“We need to warm up, stay awake until the fire gets going. Spar with me? I’ll tell you all I know then.” 

 

“Spar? You know I can take you down like a punk, Barnes.” He’s trying to lighten the mood, but he’s not sure it worked since he can’t read Bucky’s face. 

 

Then Bucky reaches up and removes the mask, displaying a feral grin. It looks like his Bucky, but there’s an edge to him now. His jaw is square, his eyes a little wilder than Steve has ever seen them. 

 

“You’d be surprised,” Bucky says, and lunges. 

 

Steve’s caught off guard. He barely manages to jump out of the way, leaning to the left only to watch Bucky adjust and land a punch on his right shoulder. It knocks him back a bit - that metal arm hits hard, and Steve’s startled besides - causing him to back up a few steps and reassess. 

 

“Holy hell,” he breathes into the still air.

 

“It was hell, but ain’t nothin’ holy about it.” 

 

“So tell me what it was.” 

 

Bucky circles him slowly, stalking him like a wildcat. Steve feels like prey, and he’s not sure if it’s the exhaustion or the cold or the sense of danger that makes him shiver. 

 

“They caught me. I survived, and they caught me. Cut off my arm at the shoulder. No anesthesia. Ran lines up into my chest and spine, connected ‘em to my nerves.”

 

Bucky feints, and Steve’s right there with him, spinning in a circle, watching him carefully. Trying not to get sick at what Bucky’s saying. 

 

“Who’s ‘they’?”

 

His best friend lunges again, but this time, Steve’s ready for him. He sweeps his feet in a wide arc, watching with awe as Bucky jumps and then kicks him in the chest, knocking him back so hard he nearly falls and cracks his head. He barely catches his balance; at that point, if Bucky had wanted to, he could’ve killed him. Steve knows that he’s fighting someone at least as powerful as he is, the most talented man he’s had to face since volunteering for the serum. 

 

“Sure you don’t know?”

 

“... I honestly have no idea, Buck. Surprise me.” 

 

Bucky shrugs, and then knocks Steve on his ass in a completely different way. “Hydra.” 

 

The world spins, and he has to sit down on the cot again. “They… they found you?”

 

“Bottom of the ravine. I was starving, bleeding, near death. Only reason I survived was because of Zola and whatever he put in my veins on that table. I should’ve died then, Steve. But I didn’t. They found me,” he affirms, “and then put my brain in a blender.”

 

Steve winces. “I don’t understand,” he says, suddenly not  _ wanting _ to understand. 

 

Bucky punches him in the face with his human hand, not hard enough to really hurt him, but enough to be a fair warning. “And heaven help me, you never will. I’ll kill you myself before I let them touch you.”

 

Steve lets his hands rest at his sides. He doesn’t want to do this. “What’d they do to you, Buck?” he whispers. “How did you… when did you… _ how _ ?” 

 

Bucky gives up, walks across the room, and fishes out a tin can full of beets. “There’s water in this shit. It’ll keep us hydrated enough to stay here for the night. Worse comes to worst, we can melt some snow.”

 

Bucky’s stalling. 

 

“Tell me.”

 

Bucky pauses with his back to Steve, then rips the top of the can with his metal arm. “They tortured me,” he says, refusing to turn around and look Steve in the eye. “I fought them, until I couldn’t fight anymore. I’ll spare you the details. You don’t want ‘em. Hydra waited until I stopped fighting and then scrambled my brains until I didn’t know who I was anymore.” 

 

“That why you didn’t recognize me at first?”

 

“Yeah. Don’t even know how I pulled you in, honestly. I remember bits and pieces of conversation, something about psychic energy, but it went way over my head and I stopped paying attention to it. I only listened for orders those days anyway. Everything else was just… noise.” 

 

He finally turns around and makes his way back to Steve, offering him the can. Steve reaches in and pulls a preserved beet slice out of the juice. 

 

“Orders for what?” 

 

“To kill.” Bucky meets his eyes calmly, says it like he’s talking about what’s for dinner. 

 

“Kill… who?” 

 

“Anybody they wanted me to.” 

 

“Jesus.” 

 

“I’d have killed him, too, if they wanted me to.”

 

“How is this possible?”

 

Bucky side-eyes him, and it reminds Steve so much of his old Bucky that he wants to weep. This new Bucky is harder. Sturdier. Terrifying. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

 

“That’s… beside the point.” 

 

“No less outlandish than my shit,” Bucky reasons, and places an ice-cold beet on his tongue before moving to light the fire with the old kindling they have available. It’s dry as dust and goes up easily; thankfully, the matches light just fine. 

 

“Alright,” Steve says slowly. “So Hydra had you. Tortured you. Brainwashed you. How did you end up… in that place?” 

 

“Pissed ‘em off one too many times. If they left me out of cryo long enough, my memories would start returning. Most of ‘em about you, pal.” Bucky gives him a small, sad smile. “One time, I was out too long. I ran away. Took ‘em days to find me ‘cause I went back to Brooklyn - you remember that old hideout in Brooklyn Heights?- but by then I was a mess, and Hydra was strong, and I just couldn’t… just couldn’t. I wanted back in the ice. And they’d have found me anyway, given the shape I was in.”

 

“Cryo? What the hell is that?” Again, Steve’s not sure he wants to know, but he has to ask for the sake of his friend. 

 

“Just what it sounds like, Stevie.”

 

“Is that why you haven’t aged?”

 

“No. I’ve been out often enough over the years I should be older than I am.”

 

“Like me.”

 

“Like you,” Bucky affirms.

 

“Okay, so… how’d you end up there?” Steve asks again.

 

“Right. They, uh, they got mad. Said a wipe wasn’t enough.”

 

“... A wipe?”

 

“Brain meet blender, remember?”

 

Steve wants to be sick. The only thing really stopping him from giving in to it is the fact that they’d be stuck all night in a room that smelled like vomit.

 

Bucky catches the look on his face. “Yeah, it was like that. Can’t even describe it. Don’t wanna try. Basically, some… sorcerer asshole, I don’t know… tossed me into another… dimension? Said I needed to take my punishment. And boy, did I.” 

 

Bucky suddenly looks lost and helpless. Steve puts his arm around him again and pulls him to his chest, savoring the warmth and the feel of Bucky. 

 

“I’m sorry that happened to you. God, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

 

“Sorry for what?” Bucky mumbles against his shoulder.

 

“Not going back for you. Jesus,” he repeats. “I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

 

Steve feels numb. He knows the shock will come later, the wave of guilt and shame overwhelming compared to what he feels now - which is already near unbearable - but his defense mechanisms are active now, and besides, he needs to be here for Bucky. 

 

“Not your fault, but I know you aren’t gonna believe that. If I remember anything about you, it’s that you’re a stubborn sonofabitch.” Steve smiles weakly and says nothing - there’s nothing else he can say. “Anyway,” Bucky continues, “I was on and off that train, reliving that fall and… what happened after… over and over again.”

 

“How did I pull you out?”

 

“I don’t know. But you spoke the language, and that was enough for me. I’d have been happy to die by your side.”

 

Oh, no.  _ No. _ No tears, not here. “The language was love, wasn’t it.” 

 

Bucky turns to him and huffs a small laugh. “It was.” He’s silent for a moment, then: “You know, they told me when they… banished me, or whatever… that love was the answer. Love was the only way I’d ever escape that place. And then they told me that I’d never escape because no one could possibly love a monster like me.”

 

Steve’s heart smashes into pieces, but he holds on to the fierce surge of protectiveness that rises up in response.

 

“Well, they didn’t count on me, now did they?”

 

“I was calling for you into the void… and you came. You  _ came _ for me, Stevie.”

 

“So we’re like… a fairytale.” Steve feels his skin flush from head to toe. 

 

Bucky laughs incredulously. “Somethin’ like that, pal.”

 

They’re comfortably quiet for a while, leaving words left unsaid while they eat their beets and let time tick slowly by. With their metabolisms, Steve knows that they’ll be in bad shape soon. 

 

“Any way you can catch a… rabbit, or something?”

 

“Out here? This is my element, so yeah. Or a fox. But we probably won’t have enough firewood to warm ourselves up and also cook it.”

 

“Then we’ll eat it raw.”

 

Bucky makes a face. “It’ll be nice when those days are past me.” 

 

“They will be soon. We’re going home.”

 

“No, we’re not. We’re burning these bastards off the face of this earth first.”

 

Steve forces himself to imagine it. Surgery, rewiring Bucky’s own body without anesthesia. Putting his brain ‘in a blender,’ whatever the hell that even means. And more - lots more, if he has to guess. Bucky’s reserved about it, and some of that might just be who he is now, but Steve’s fairly certain there’s a lot more to the story. A lot more that Bucky is protecting him from, because even now, Bucky’s first instinct is to protect him. 

 

When it should’ve been the other way around. What good is this body if it can’t save his best friend from that kind of torment? 

 

No, Steve’s not going to think about that now. No use. He can break down later.

 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “We sure as hell are gonna do that.” 

 

“We can take out this base by ourselves - it’s a small one. But we’ll need a team afterwards. And all I’ve known for years are handlers.”

 

There’s a gleam in Steve’s eye when he turns to Bucky and says, “You let me take care of that.”

 

***

 

Each of them relieves himself and eats as much as his stomach can hold. Then they sit next to each other on the bed. The cave is awkwardly silent now that there are no pressing concerns.

 

“Look,” Bucky says at the same time Steve says, “I just want-”

 

They stare at each other for a stunned moment and then, unbelievably, start laughing. The hysteria continues for what feels like forever, until their stomachs hurt and they can barely breathe, super soldiers or no. Afterwards, Steve feels a little fuzzy, but it’s like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He can’t even imagine how good that must’ve felt for Bucky after seventy years of torment. How many times had Bucky laughed during those years? Not much, if at all, he’s willing to bet.

 

Steve takes a deep breath and makes a decision. “I don’t want this to be awkward between us, so just let me speak, okay?”

 

Bucky gives him a slightly bemused look and nods. 

 

“Alright. Well, I kind of… fell in love with you… when I was about ten years old.” He feels his face flush but keeps going, even though he can’t meet his best friend’s eyes for this part. “I’d hoped it’d go away, but it never did. I loved you from afar, hated all those girls you’d come home with. But at least you came home to me. And then you left for Europe, and it killed me inside to know you were out there, maybe dying or dead. I took Erskine up on his offer because… a lot of reasons. But that was one of them.” He sighs. “I know this might make it weird, but I’m so happy that I got a chance to say it. So I don’t regret any of it,” he finishes, lifting his head and meeting those silver eyes once more. The blush is still on Steve’s face, but there’s nothing to be ashamed of. 

 

Bucky stares back at him, expressionless, but Steve isn’t worried. He has a feeling that this will be less than a blip on the radar as far as Bucky’s concerns go. Bucky’s good at hiding it, but there’s a lot of pain inside him, demons that Steve will never be able to understand. Steve can see it plain as day, in the new hardness of Bucky’s jaw, the lines around his eyes, the cautious, watchful way he stands. 

 

Steve once again has to forcefully push down thoughts of what had transformed Bucky into this. They’d only end up circling a drain that’s not only impossible to climb out of, but dangerous in their situation besides.

 

Eventually, he clears his throat, realizing that he and Bucky have been staring at each other for a while, lost in thought. Bucky startles as if waking from a dream. 

 

“Yeah. Well. I’m starting to remember more about… what came before. I don’t think I ever felt that way about… well, fellas…” He trails off, but starts talking again immediately when Steve’s face falls. “But I’m not the same man I was back then. And I don’t think our little fairy tale would have worked without… me. Feeling the same.”

 

Steve’s not sure how to take this. He cocks his head to the side quizzically. “I’m not sure I understand.” 

 

Bucky sighs, and he sounds a million years old. “I don’t either, Stevie.”

 

“Well…” What is there to say? “It’s not a door we need to open any time soon. Uh… well…” 

 

Bucky knows what he means before he says it. “Yeah. We’ll need to share body heat.”

 

Steve blushes again. “Yeah.” He shivers as if to prove the point.

 

“Nothing for it. But we shared a bed back in Brooklyn, didn’t we?”

 

He smiles, a slow, sad thing. “Yeah, Buck. We did. Once upon a time.” 

 

_ Enough with the fairy tales, Rogers. Jesus.  _

 

“Yeah, well, let’s get some sleep.”

 

***

 

It’s inevitable, really, has been from the beginning. There’s no way the two of them can tumble into bed, naked and wrapped around each other for warmth, without something happening. Not with the way they feel about each other. 

 

Though, Steve thinks wryly, it might’ve been easier to ignore if they had lain back-to-front. 

 

Instead, they’re lying on their sides facing each other, arms curving around necks and torsos, pressed tight against one another. The emergency blanket is thick, covering them from head to toe. As he burrows into it, Steve can feel the ghost of Bucky’s breath run fingers down his neck, and he shivers from more than just the frigid air. He can smell Bucky too, sweat and leather and ...Bucky. It reminds him of home - not the Tower, but rather Brooklyn and their tiny apartment in Bed-Stuy.

 

Bucky’s warmth is welcome, and his proximity even more so, but Steve’s traitorous body wakes up in a way that is entirely too personal for their first night together in over seventy years, too personal for an underground bunker in the ass-end of Siberia. As often as they’d huddled together in the past, shielding each other from cold Brooklyn evenings during the months they couldn’t afford heat, Steve had never gotten hard like this. Sure, they’d woken up with morning wood, occasionally had wet dreams like any other man, but Bucky’s proximity alone hadn’t gotten Steve excited. Probably because he figured there was no way Bucky would feel the same. But this is a different situation. They’re both different. Hardened, tired, needing something to cling to. 

 

And in the middle of a fairy tale. 

 

As if on cue, Bucky’s eyes meet his. Their warmth is visible even in the low light of the cavern. Steve feels like his entire life has led to this moment, condensed into a single point from which all his actions will spread from this day forward. Steve in every universe experiences this moment, or something akin to it - the twitch settles across his skin, the surety of that fact.

 

What it boils down to is this: There is no version of Steve Rogers that does not love Bucky Barnes.

 

Bucky’s low hum reverberates throughout the cavern. “What’s on your mind, Rogers?”

 

“Nothing important,” he murmurs, tightening his grip around Bucky’s torso and moving closer, to where he can feel his own hot breath against Bucky’s neck.

 

Bucky leans his head in and kisses Steve’s temple, gripping him tightly. “I’m willin’ to bet that ain’t true.”

 

Steve makes a noncommittal sound. He’s not sure what to say. There are so many things that could be uttered in this moment, yet none of them speak to what’s in his heart. Nothing can speak to it. Words can only serve to cheapen the full truth of it. So he says nothing.

 

Their bodies are beginning to sweat under the blanket and Steve is starting to harden against Bucky’s thigh when Bucky, ever the expressive one, comes back to it, poking because he can’t help it. 

 

“I know we said we weren’t gonna-” 

 

“Yeah, we’re not,” Steve says hoarsely. “Let’s just…” 

 

“Just what?” Bucky asks, voice laced with amusement. “Just ignore the situation? See if it goes away?” 

 

“You always did like to call out the elephant in the room,” Steve grumbles, half under his breath.

 

Bucky shifts next to him, rubbing his thigh against Steve’s cock, and Steve has to bite back a hiss. His best friend is silent for a few blessed moments as he thinks of just how to continue addressing said elephant.

 

“They fucked me up, Steve,” Bucky finally says, and it’s nothing close to what Steve had expected him to say. He jerks back to look Bucky in the eye.

 

“Don’t say that.”

 

“They did, though. I’m not a whole person anymore. My memory is slowly coming back, but along with the good comes the bad. The things I’ve done…” Bucky’s voice has dropped to a whisper. “I’m barely human, Steve.”

 

“You seem fine to me. Quiet, a little on edge… but still Bucky. And the Bucky I knew once upon a time was a good man.”

 

“That’s because you don’t know yet. You’ll change your mind when you find out. And I’m  _ tired _ .” He leans his head against Steve’s, sighing deeply. “I’m a monster. There’s no changing that. And you’d be a fool to stand by my side.”

 

Steve hates hearing this. What Bucky doesn’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t matter what he’s done - especially if things went down the way he’s said they had - Steve will love him through all of it. 

 

Words aren’t going to cut it, though, not through the pain bubbling up from inside Bucky’s conscience, not now. So Steve takes a chance - he pulls back to look Bucky in the eye, grips his chin, and presses their lips together.

 

Bucky gasps against his lips, shocked by Steve’s surge of affection. He doesn’t pull back, though, just lets Steve lead the kiss. Nice and slow, mouths moving against one another, open but not exploring, not yet. His fingers dig into Steve’s skin where they’re wrapped around his torso, and Steve shivers with it. 

 

After ten seconds or ten minutes, Bucky pulls back and shakes his head. 

 

“Stevie,” he murmurs against Steve’s lips, “I’m broken. Damaged. You don’t want me. You just… you love someone who died years ago...” He trails off, but he doesn’t move away.

 

“Who are you to tell me what I want, Barnes? Or who I love, for that matter?” 

 

“You don’t even know me.”

 

“I know you well enough. I know what I saw, what I spent a day living, that you’ve gone through for three years. That alone is enough. And there’s sixty-some more odd years of shit to add to it.”

 

“But-”

 

Steve hushes him with two fingers over his mouth. “No, Buck. There’s nothing that could change how I feel. Nothing.”

 

_ What will it take for you to believe me? _

 

Bucky nods, meeting Steve’s eyes. “Okay,” he whispers against Steve’s fingers. “You’re a crazy bastard, but I’m here.”

 

“To the end of the line, pal,” Steve says with a soft smile, and that does it. That breaks the dam. The sound of Bucky’s sobs are muted in the thin, close air as Steve holds him through it, rubbing his back with soothing hands. Steve’s not sure what Bucky’s crying for - lives he’s taken, the life that was taken from him - but it doesn’t matter. They’re together now and that’s all that matters.

 

When Bucky’s sobs have died down to hiccups and the occasional hitched breath, Steve reaches out one hand and cups Bucky’s chin, pulling it gently so that Bucky faces him. His heart breaks a little at the sight. His best friend wears a wan smile, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Tear tracks run down his cheeks. Steve wipes one away with his thumb as it trails down Bucky’s face. 

 

Time grinds to a halt again, or so it seems to Steve. He gets lost in Bucky’s eyes like he did on the hilltop half a world away, only this time, Bucky’s a solid thing he can feel from head to toe. He wants to move in closer, wants to press every inch of his skin against Bucky, but he can’t seem to move. This moment is measured in milliseconds and yet stretches into infinity. 

 

It’s some time before he realizes that Bucky is hard against his hip bone. When it registers, all Steve can think is that they’ve waited long enough. 

 

He leans in, fingers still cupping Bucky’s chin, and slowly, gently presses their mouths together. Bucky goes willingly, wrapping his arms around Steve tighter than ever. Then Steve moans as Bucky weaves a hand into his hair and tugs at it, making his entire body tingle. 

 

He deepens the kiss, gripping Bucky’s body so tight it will leave bruises, and still Bucky doesn’t seem to mind. He allows Steve’s tongue to pry his mouth open, inviting him to explore his taste with a gasp. Steve kisses him slowly, deeply, making love to Bucky’s mouth with his tongue, and Bucky responds beautifully, spreading his legs and wrapping them around Steve’s hips. 

 

They grind against each other as they kiss. Steve is surprised to find that neither of them is in any particular hurry. Sure, there’s a part of him - and probably of Bucky, as well - that is urging him on, pushing him to grind out his pleasure right here and now against Bucky’s hip as Bucky does the same. But that part doesn’t come close to overriding the urge to explore, to discover, to learn. It stems from a deeper, much more profound ache than the physical urge to climax.

 

They kiss until they’re breathless, until their lips are bruised and swollen, but they still keep it slow and steady. Steve breathes heavily into Bucky’s open mouth, rolling his hips languidly, Bucky doing the same next to him. He feels intoxicated, like he hasn’t been able to feel since the forties, except it’s better because he’s drunk on emotion, on  _ love _ , and he can’t help it if the fairy tale metaphors keep piling up. True love’s kiss knocked him on his ass, and there’s no making that untrue.

 

The heat pooling in his groin feels like a stove on simmer, left to warm but not cook, and it’s perfect.  _ Perfect. _

 

He doesn’t know how much time they lose kissing, couldn’t even track it in this timeless place if he wanted to, but when Bucky finally pulls back, Steve is pretty sure he’s floating on a cloud. He’s probably wearing the big, goofy grin that his friends tell him he gets when he’s happy, but Bucky’s intense expression sobers him up quickly. 

 

“What is it?” he whispers. 

 

“It’s nothing. I just…” 

 

Steve can’t help himself; he puts his lips back on Bucky’s temple, his jaw, neck, and shoulder, like he’s addicted. 

 

Bucky huffs a laugh and grabs Steve’s face between his hands to hold him still. “Can I just…?”

 

“Anything you need, Buck. If it’s mine to give you, you know I will.”

 

“I want to feel…”

 

Instead of continuing, Bucky wraps one arm around Steve’s neck, and grabs Steve’s hand with the other. He places it on his chest where Steve can feel his heartbeat. 

 

Steve smiles softly at him in understanding. “Yes. We’re real.”

 

Bucky takes his hand off of Steve’s, leaving it in place over his heart, and reaches out to return the favor. Only this time, when his hand touches Steve’s chest, a wave of electricity flows from his fingertips and wraps Steve up in a cocoon of light.

 

Steve gasps as every hair on his body stands on end. A low groan makes its way out of his throat. Bucky pulls his hand away as though he’d been burned, but Steve is quick to grab it and place it on his chest once more.

 

“No. No, it doesn’t hurt.”

 

Bucky swallows audibly. “Are you sure?”

 

“It never did, Buck.”

 

“I didn’t think… I didn’t know… How did I do that?” 

 

Steve pulls him close once more and kisses him deeply until Bucky’s muscles stop tensing.

 

“Relax,” Steve soothes. “Just let it happen.”

 

Bucky closes his eyes and suddenly the lightning is flowing from his fingers once more. It runs in sparking tendrils down Steve’s spine, all around and through his body. The sensation settles in his pelvis, where his cock lies heavy against Bucky’s. 

 

He breathes deeply, reveling in the sensation rather than chasing it to its inevitable conclusion. Bucky watches him with wide eyes full of awe. Steve smiles back at him, completely smitten. Then Bucky removes his hand from Steve’s chest, carrying the lightning with him, and moves down Steve’s torso to touch him. 

 

Steve feels electric, literally and figuratively. The palm gripping him starts to move, slowly but confidently stroking him and lighting him up from the inside. In the meantime, Bucky doesn’t look away, and Steve couldn’t even if he tried to. The feeling crescendos until he’s gasping for air underneath the blanket, climax approaching too quickly to stop.

 

His vision whites out for a moment; distantly, he can hear himself whimpering in Bucky’s arms. Bucky removes his hand from Steve’s softening cock and wraps it back around his neck, pulling him forward. If he had been standing, Steve would have staggered into Bucky’s arms. He feels exhausted, drained. He can’t even imagine how Bucky must feel right now.

 

Bucky kisses him, little pecks along his jaw and chin and lips. Steve takes a few moments to come down from the high of his orgasm, then huffs a laugh and pulls back. 

 

He meets Bucky’s grey eyes. “I want you to make love to me,” Steve murmurs, feeling his face heat up again but refusing to back down. 

 

Bucky closes his eyes, and Steve can feel his friend’s still-hard cock twitch in interest. He’s ready to argue that it’s the right thing to do, that they’ve waited long enough, and who knows how much time they’ll have left, but to his surprise, Bucky just nods and swallows.

 

“We don’t have any... anything slick.”

 

“I don’t care.”

 

“Stevie… I don’t wanna hurt you.” 

 

“You won’t.”

 

That’s not quite true - Steve’s not hugely experienced, but he’s not exactly new to this particular rodeo, either. Spit might do it for two fingers, but Bucky’s not a small man. 

 

“Steve…” Bucky says, exasperated.

 

“You won’t hurt me. I need you. You’re here, you’re alive, and I just… need you.”

 

He sounds desperate, pathetic, but it doesn’t matter because he’s telling the truth. He  _ needs _ to feel Bucky moving inside him, needs to be that close, to feel Bucky’s heartbeat as his cock throbs and spills just for Steve. He’ll beg if he has to.

 

Thankfully, Bucky makes that a moot point. “Shh. Okay.” He kisses Steve, gentle and warm like a ray of sunlight. He wastes no time, reaching around Steve’s body to run a spit-wet finger down his crack. The finger circling his hole makes Steve groan, really let it out loudly for the first time tonight. Then Bucky bites his bottom lip, slips the finger inside, and releases the lightning once more, making Steve cry out like a banshee. He’s fully hard again and wrung out before things have even gotten started.

 

“Holy hell,” he whimpers as Bucky adds another finger, still keeping the fire dancing along Steve’s skin. “Buck…”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes against his lips. “I know, baby.”

 

“I love you so goddamn much,” Steve sobs, hiding his face in Bucky’s neck. He feels like he can’t even keep his head up any longer. 

 

“I know, baby,” Bucky repeats. “I love you, too.”

 

“I’m sorry it took this for us to be together.”

 

“Let’s not talk about that now, okay? No ‘sorries’ here. Not when we’re like this.”

 

He’s right; Steve knows he’s right, but it’s hard, because there is an unavoidable layer of sorrow here, even in this precious moment. He’s sobbing uncontrollably now, exhausted and somehow more needy than he’s ever been. And when Bucky enters him with a third finger, it’s too much. It’s too  _ much _ .

 

Bucky keeps fingering him as Steve cries into his neck, making shushing sounds, rubbing the fingers of his other hand through the Steve’s short hair. It’s the single most intimate moment of Steve’s life, and he swears to himself that he’ll never forget it. 

 

Finally, his breath evens out, and Bucky takes the opportunity to roll him over and settle on top of him. He spits into his hand and slicks up his cock as well as he can, and slowly, carefully enters Steve.

 

It burns, of course, but the fullness is something Steve’s only experienced on his own, and it’s nothing compared to this. Bucky is inside of him, and it’s like Steve’s finally no longer alone. He’s joined in the most intimate way possible with the love of his life, and goddamn if that isn’t a miracle after thinking he was dead and gone for so long.

 

Bucky gives him a moment once he’s fully seated inside, waits until Steve meets his eyes to give him permission. It’s a gentle but deep slide that feels like it’s rocking into Steve’s guts, like it’s rearranging his very insides, and  _ oh _ , Steve’s not gonna last long like this. Just the knowledge of what’s happening, Bucky and him joining, is nearly enough to send him flying over the edge. 

 

Then Bucky bites the junction of his neck and shoulder as he shifts positions, hitting Steve’s prostate head-on, and Steve does fly over the edge. He comes again, even harder than the first time. He’s pretty sure he loses consciousness, for how long he’s not sure, as the lightning rides along his skin in pretty blue waves. 

 

His best friend, ever the gentleman, stops moving to give Steve’s oversensitive system a rest. Steve matches his breaths to Bucky’s without thinking about it, like it’s second nature - like it always should’ve been. 

 

They simply hold each other.

 

Steve feels giddy now, well past exhaustion, laughing lightly as Bucky starts to move inside him once more. The euphoria carries him along in a river of joy; he runs his hands up and down Bucky’s sides and snickers when he feels shivers and goosebumps beneath his palms. Bucky bites his neck again in retaliation, making Steve moan happily underneath him. 

 

Bucky takes his sweet time fucking Steve, rocking his hips and holding on to Steve for dear life. When he comes, it’s silently and with his eyes closed, and Steve feels a brief moment of sorrow that he couldn’t look into his lover’s eyes as he came inside him for the first time. 

 

It’s okay though, because the way Bucky grips him, tight enough to bruise, like he thinks Steve’s going to disappear if he lets go, makes Steve’s heart skip a beat. He falls asleep wrapped up in the blanket and Bucky, and doesn’t dream.

 

***

  
  


In the morning, things are different. That floaty feeling from last night is gone, replaced by a much more sober one. There are still things to do, and there is a lot to work through.

 

And it’s fucking cold. 

 

They dress under the blankets, clinging to each other as well as they can for warmth; Steve is happy that they had the foresight to keep the bucket nearby so that they don’t have to leave the blanket nude. It’s weird pissing into a waste container underneath a blanket while your best friend holds on to you as tightly as possible, but Steve has fought aliens and met gods in the last few years, so it’s far from the strangest thing he’s ever done.

 

“I had a lot of time, you know,” Bucky says, apropos of nothing. He pulls on his thick tac pants lazily, reminding Steve of a jungle cat, so large and dangerous, yet graceful, elegant. It’s a strange contrast. “Over the last three years. My mind went numb to it. Just… floated away. I think I got _less_ crazy than I was, somehow. Or maybe it’s you here, I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t wanna go back. Not to them, not to that place. I wanna go… home. Not sure if it’s possible, or what that even means now, but I want to at least try.” 

 

“I want nothing more than to give you that.”

 

“But you know I won’t be the same man I once was, don’t you? I can’t be. The Winter Soldier is still a part of me, probably always will be.” Bucky looks at him imploringly, obviously wanting him to understand but not sure if that’s possible. “You don’t know what I was, Steve. And I worry you’ll run away when you do.” 

 

Bucky seems resigned to that fact, and it breaks Steve’s heart a little bit to see it. It’s true; he doesn’t know exactly what Bucky’s done, though he’s sure Natasha can find out. But in his mind, at least, nothing Bucky could do would make him love him less. Instead of trying to explain that - for he has a feeling they’re going to argue over this many times in the coming days, weeks, months - he leans in and kisses him, light and feather-soft. 

 

“End of the line means end of the line,” he says fiercely against Bucky’s chapped lips. 

 

“We’ll see, pal. For now, we’ve got work to do.” 

 

“You know where we’re going?” Steve asks, wincing at the cold as he discards the blanket.

 

“I do,” Bucky replies, jaw set. “Let’s kill us some Nazis, Captain.”

 

The above-ground bunker is only a few klicks eastward from their hiding spot. Steve wonders why Bucky didn’t have them attack it last night; he must have been more exhausted than he’d let on. 

 

They’re not exactly inconspicuous in the snow, even with Bucky’s uncanny ability to blend in to his surroundings, so they find themselves in combat several hundred feet from the base. It’s not ideal, but between his shield and Bucky’s quick dodges, they manage to avoid anything more than a few glancing blows from the bullets flying at them. 

 

And as Bucky had stated, the place isn’t exactly crawling with agents. Besides that, Bucky is a fucking force of nature. He’s never seen anything like it, not even after watching himself on video. That metal arm can tear the head off a man - can, and does, repeatedly. The first time it happens, Steve stares, wide-eyed. He and Bucky share a glance, and Steve sees no quarter in Bucky’s eyes. 

 

Steve remembers what Bucky said: they’d tortured him. He’d seen the marks, the scars connecting the arm to his shoulder and chest. So, while he tries to kill a little more humanely than his best friend, there’s no doubt in his mind that these men must die. Even the scientists, the civilians that make up half the base. 

 

_ Or maybe especially the scientists, _ he thinks, considering the chair and the cryostasis pod sitting in the basement. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.  _ This _ is the site of Bucky’s worst nightmares. Steve has to forcibly hold back the taste of bile. 

 

He manages to find a comm terminal where he can contact the team. He gives them the coordinates for the base, avoiding their questions, but Natasha grabs the phone and says she’ll explain it to the team on the way to Siberia. Thankful, Steve hangs up the phone as soon as Bucky makes it back to the control room.

 

Bucky raises his eyes. 

 

“I told you I had a team. They’re on the way now. All we’ve gotta do is wait.”

 

Bucky takes it in stride. “How long?”

 

“Five hours or so.”

 

“We can camp out here in the meantime.”

 

“You sure everyone’s dead?”

 

“If they aren’t now, they will be soon,” Bucky replies, and Steve doesn’t ask.

 

The bunker is still cold, but nothing close to the tundra outside, or even the strange cave where Steve had lost his virginity. He abandons his seat in the control room for the couch in the common room, right by the quarters Hydra agents called their home. Bucky checks sightlines and keeps an eye on the control room, but settles against him, back to Steve’s chest as he leans against the armrest. The wait isn’t exactly comfortable, but it’s not tense, either. They’re just happy to be together for the moment. The rest - the arguments, Bucky’s reintegration into society, his probable trial - that will come later. For now, this is everything Steve has ever needed, even stuck in a Hydra compound in the middle of nowhere.

 

“Fifteen minutes out,” Romanoff’s voice eventually comes over the comm link in his ear, and that’s the signal to get going. Bucky stands up and then turns around and smirks at Steve, causing him to furrow his brows in consternation. That only makes Bucky look more devious, and that means he’s about to cause trouble. No different from when they were teens back in Brooklyn. 

 

“What,” Steve states more than asks.

 

“Let’s blow this joint.”

 

“There’s no time, and… what?”

 

“I got everything I needed, and the joint’s ready to go. All we have to do is take the remote with us, and BOOM!” He raises his hands up to demonstrate, before his face changes into the most hilariously excited expression Steve has ever seen. “I don’t even need the remote!”

 

“Really?” Steve asks, exasperated. 

 

“Really.” Bucky’s face suddenly loses its happy character, and all at once, Steve is sorry. There’s no reason to deny Bucky this. Not after what’d been done to him here. 

 

“I’m sorry. I get it. It’s not just some pyromaniac thing.”

 

“No, you don’t get it, Rogers, but I don’t expect you to. What you do have to do is respect it. I’ve got the little bit of intel they’ve been holding here. I’m blowin’ this place sky high. Now c’mon.”

 

Steve can get behind that, he supposes.

 

***

 

That’s how the team finds them, standing in the middle of a snow-covered field in Siberia, making out like teenagers in front of a building surrounded by lightning, shadow, and fire.

 

Natasha shakes her head fondly. Tony takes a step forward and then immediately back when he notices that Steve is kissing a  _ man _ , one that is an internationally-known fugitive, if Natasha’s correct in her assumptions. Sam… doesn’t seem to know what to do with this, and Thor?

 

Thor is  _ mad. _

 

“You stole my thunder!” he yells, completely unironically, and Steve laughs against Bucky’s mouth as Natasha snickers. “Who dares to power this storm?”

 

Bucky raises his hand without moving away from Steve’s lips. They just keep kissing as Thor squawks, until the team forcibly grabs them - or Steve, at least, knowing that Bucky will follow. The last of Siberia that Bucky ever sees is smoke and lightning from a storm of his own creation, a piece of his freedom slotting in beside his escape from the spirit world… and he’s finally on the way home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it, my Captain America Reverse Big Bang for 2018! Thank you to all who participated and those of you who encouraged me along the way.


End file.
